Deeplinks Blog posts about Locational Privacy

You might be surprised to learn that the vast majority of new cars sold in the United States contain a device that continuously monitors the driver’s behavior and vehicle performance. This so-called “black box” or Event Data Recorder (EDR) records at least the last several seconds of vehicle and driver data before a crash, ostensibly for use by crash investigators. Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed rules that would mandate EDRs in all new cars and light trucks.

While we agree that EDRs can serve a valuable forensic function, we are concerned that the NHTSA’s proposed rules fail to address driver and car-owner privacy in a meaningful way.

As the year draws to a close, EFF is looking back at the major trends influencing digital rights in 2012 and discussing where we are in the fight for free expression, innovation, fair use, and privacy. Click here to read other blog posts in this series.

EFF has long been fighting to defend your privacy in your physical movements. 2011 brought major developmentsaround cell phone and GPS tracking in the courts and Congress. But that was nothing compared to 2012, which turned out to be a monumental year.

When the Supreme Court said in United States v. Jonesthat planting a GPS device on a vehicle is a physical intrusion that amounts to a Fourth Amendment "search," the government should have gotten the memo: the police have to get a probable cause warrant issued by a neutral magistrate before installing one of those devices on a car to track a person's location. Amazingly, that hasn't stopped the government from coming up with new ways to argue that it can use GPS devices to track people's movements without a warrant. So we teamed up with the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in an amicus brief filed last week urging a federal appeals court to reject these arguments.

Location privacy took a hit in California yesterday when Governor Jerry Brown vetoedSB 1434, an EFF- and ACLU-sponsored bill that would have required law enforcement to apply for a search warrant in order to obtain location tracking information.